Thursday, September 30, 2004

Hardening and tempering

When you forge a knife, the last, and possibly most critical stages, are hardening and tempering. You take the forged, rough-ground blade and bring it up to critical temperature. It has to be even; if the section you need to make hard varies in temperature along it's length, it won't harden evenly. And then you quench it in oil. It smokes and bubbles, and puts incredible stress on the piece. If there's a flaw it may crack, or shatter. It's possible for a crack to form internally, that may not show itself until you test the finished piece, and it breaks.

Then you temper it. You take the hardened blade, and heat it again, to a lower temperature. It's a balancing act; if you get it too hot, you remove too much of the hardness. Not hot enough, it'll be brittle, and can snap when put under stress. Fine steel, badly heat-treated, may be junk. Moderately good steel with first-class treatment, can be marvelous.

I was thinking, after the previous post, about the two candidates, and about hardening and tempering in humans. Someone can seem a marvelous person, and fall apart or show real flaws after the stresses involved; others, who may not seem like much of anything, can have a lot of impurities burned out, and become far more than they'd have known without the fire.

Yeah, Kerry was actually under fire in Viet Nam a few times. And Bush flew fighters, which can also kill you and others. In later years, other things happened. Kerry went into politics right away, Bush not for quite a while from what I know. Kerry seems to have used the time in the Navy mostly as a way to pad a resume' for later political use, and whacked on the people he served with. I think that, under different circumstances, Bush might well have made a career of the Air Force. Bush's real forging came later, I think. Drinking and whatever else, and then his wife said, "Straighten up, or else", and meant it. And he did.

I think Bush came out of the fires quite possibly better metal than went in. I don't think Kerry changed; he just stayed the same, like a mild steel that can't be hardened. And I know which I trust more right now.

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Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences. - C.S. Lewis

Y'all got on this boat for different reasons, but y'all come to the same place. So now I'm asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave. - Capt. Mal

A Rifleman’s Prayer:Oh Lord, I would live my life in freedom, peace and happiness, enjoying the simple pleasures of hearth and home. I would die an old, old man in my own bed, preferably of sexual overexertion.

But if that is not to be, Lord, if monsters such as this should find their way to my little corner of the world on my watch, then help me to sweep those bastards from the ramparts, because doing that is good, and right, and just.

And if in this I should fall, let me be found atop a pile of brass, behind the wall I made of their corpses. Geek with a .45

"He's Black Council,", I said.

"Or maybe stupid," Ebenezar countered.

I thought about it. "Not sure which is scarier."

Ebenezar blinked at me, then snorted. "Stupid, Hoss. Every time. Only so many blackhearted villains in the world, and they only get uppity on occasion. Stupid's everywhere, every day." Ebenezar McCoy

“A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition” ― Rudyard Kipling

This deprecation of individual freedom was objectionable to me. I am convinced now, as I was then, that man is an end because he is a child of God. Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as means to the end of the state; but always as an end within himself." Dr. M.L. King Jr.